uncharacteristic edge to his voice. He’d spent a good part of midafternoon illegally in Paul Osborn’s hotel room going through his things and had come up with nothing but an array of dirty linen, traveler’s checks, vitamins, antihistamines, headache pills and condoms. With the exception of the condoms, he found nothing he didn’t have in his own hotel room. It wasn’t that he was against rubbers, it was just that he’d honestly had no interest in sex since his Judy had died four years earlier. All the years they were married he’d harbored sensational fantasies about making it with all kinds of women, nubile teenagers to middle-aged Avon ladies, and he’d met any number who were more than willing to lie down on the spot for a homicide detective, but he never had. Then when Judy had gone, none of it, not even the fantasies, seemed worth it. He was like a man who thought he was starving and then suddenly wasn’t hungry anymore.
Aside from the ticket stubs from the Ambassadors Theatre in London that had sent up Lebrun’s antennae in the first place, the only objects of even passing interest he’d turned up in Osborn’s belongings were-restaurant receipts, tucked in the pocket of his “daily reminder.” They were dated Friday, September 30, and Saturday, October 1. Friday was Geneva, Saturday, London. The receipts were for two. But that was all. So Osborn had taken someone to dinner in both those cities. So had a hundred thousand other people. He’d told Paris detectives he’d been alone in his hotel in London. They probably never asked him about dinner. Chiefly because they had no reason. Any more than McVey had reason now to connect him to the beheading murders.
Lebrun smiled at McVey’s painful dismay. “My friend, you forget you are in Paris.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,
McVey’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding.”
“Not kidding,” Lebrun said, lighting another cigarette.
“Does Osborn know?”
Lebrun shrugged.
McVey glowered at him. “So she’s out of bounds, right?”
McVey stood up. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to my hotel and then back to London. And if you have any more bright suspects, check them out yourself first, okay?”
“I seem to remember offering to do it this time,” Lebrun said with a grin. “You may recall that the idea to come to Paris was yours.”
“Next time talk me out of it.” McVey started for the door.
“McVey.” Lebrun reached over and stamped out his, cigarette. “I couldn’t reach you this afternoon.”
McVey said nothing. His methods of investigation were his own and they were not always entirely legal, nor did they always involve fellow officers—the Paris P.D., Interpol, the London Metropolitan Police and the LAPD included.
“I wish I had been able to,” Lebrun said.
“Why?” McVey said flatly, wondering if Lebrun knew and was testing him.
Pulling open his top desk drawer, Lebrun took out another manila folder. “We were in the middle of this,” he said, handing it to McVey. “We could have used your expertise.”
McVey eyed him for a moment, then opened it. What he saw were crime scene photographs of an extremely brutal murder. A man had been killed in what looked like an apartment. Separate photographs showed close-ups of his knees. Each had been destroyed by a single, and powerful, gunshot.
“Done with a U.S.-made Colt thirty-eight automatic fitted with a silencer. We found it next to him. Taped grip. No prints. No identification numbers,” Lebrun said quietly.
McVey looked at the next two photographs. The first was of the man’s face. It was bloated three times its normal size. The eyes protruded from the skull in horror. Pulled tight around the neck was a wire garrote that looked as if it was once a clothes hanger. The second phonograph was of the groin area. The man’s genitals had been shot away.
“Jesus,” McVey mumbled under his breath.
“Done with the same weapon,” Lebrun said;
McVey looked up. “Somebody was trying to get him to talk.”
“If it were me, I would have told them whatever they wanted to know,” Lebrun said. “Just in the hopes they’d kill me.”
“Why are you showing me this?” McVey asked. The First Prefecture of Paris Police had a sparkling record as far as inner-city homicide investigations went. They certainly didn’t need McVey’s counsel.
Lebrun smiled. “Because don’t want you to go running back to London quite so soon.”
“I don’t get it.” McVey glanced at the open file once more.
“His name is Jean Packard. He was a private detective for the Paris office of Kolb International. On Tuesday, Dr. Paul Osborn hired him to locate someone.”
“Osborn?”
Lighting another cigarette, Lebrun blew out the match and nodded.
“A pro did this, not Osborn,” McVey said.
“I know. Tech found a smudged print on a piece of broken glass. It wasn’t Osborn’s and we had nothing in our computer that would match it. So we sent it to Interpol headquarters at Lyon.”
“And?”
“McVey,-we only found him this morning.”
“It still wasn’t Osborn,” McVey said with certainty.
“No, it wasn’t,” Lebrun agreed. “And it might be a complete coincidence and not have a thing to do with him.”
McVey sat back down.
Lebrun picked up the folder and put it back in his drawer. “You’re thinking things are complicated enough and this Jean Packard business has nothing to do with our headless bodies and bodyless head. But you’re, also thinking you came to Paris because of Osborn, because there was the slightest chance he might have had something to do with it. And now this happens. So you’re asking yourself if we look far enough, for long enough, maybe there is a connection after all. . . . Am I correct, McVey?”
McVey looked up. “Oui,” he said.
22
THE DARK limousine was waiting outside.
Vera had seen it pull up from her bedroom window. How many times had she stood in that window waiting for it to turn the corner? How many times had her heart jumped at the sight of it? Now she wished it had nothing to do with her, that she was watching from another apartment and that the intrigue belonged to someone else.
She wore a black dress with black stockings, pearl earrings and a simple pearl necklace. Thrown over her shoulders was a short jacket of silver mink.
The chauffeur opened the rear door and she got in. A moment later he got behind the wheel and drove off.
At 4:55, Henri Kanarack washed his hands in the employee sink at the bakery, stuck his time card into the clock on the wall and punched out for the day. Stepping into the hallway where he kept his coat, he found Agnes Demblon waiting for him.
“Do you want a lift?” she asked.
“Why? Do you ever give me a lift home? No, you don’t. You always stay until the day’s receipts are in.”
“Yes. But, tonight I . . .”
